A leader of the third-largest Palestinian faction told the Egyptian newspaper El-BaladThursday that the truce with Israel will be brief and that Palestinians are braced for a “more savage and bloody round” of fighting with Israel.

“We are preparing for a new, more savage round,” Dr. Mohammed Al-Hindi, a leading Palestinian Islamic Jihad figure told the newspaper. “We are in a short truce(hudna), the Israeli enemy is preparing for further rounds of war in Gaza.”

The “resistance factions” must be prepared for the next battle, which will be more violent and “start the curve of the collapse of the Israeli occupation,” Al-Hindi said Wednesday night at a ceremony honoring journalists working in the Gaza Strip.